Auctioneer Pricing

[piscene]

I have been running Auctioneer for about 3 weeks or so. It seems that the pricing is consistently higher than what I can actually get for my items. Does Auctioneer use the prices that items sell for, or just listing prices? If it uses listing prices, it will be skewed up by the people who have items listed for 3 or 4 times what everyone else is listing them for. And there are a lot of those.

I have been browsing the AH item by item before listing, then coming up with my own pricing, usually at the low end of the competition pricing. I can't stand getting the Auction Expired mail.

How does everyone else handle pricing with Auctioneer Addon?

[Erept0r]

It uses both sell for and listing prices, it will show you in the box what they are, and over how many auctions it's averaging. If it has no historical average it will mark it up 300x vendor by default. You can modify that somewhere. Make sure you're scanning your auction house prior to posting your product, my scan takes over 5 minutes to complete so it's a good time to get a snack.

[Ev_]

Prices from Auctioneer will almost always be higher than what you'll actually get. Here's why:
There are three price ranges for an item: below market value (deals), market value, and above market value (ripoffs). Scanning produces a median of all of these. Problem is, auctions below market value go quickly, so catching them in a scan is less likely. Market value auctions are the most common, so Auctioneer gets pretty accurate. The real problem is the above market value auctions. You've seen those Linen cloth stacks for a 200g buyout right? People do that a lot, for exhorbitant prices, and they never get bought so you'll catch them all when you scan. They get thrown in the mix and it pushes the median up.

Thankfully Auctioneer uses medians, not means. Prices would be even more off if that was the case. So yes, just use Auctioneer as a guide, not a hard data provider.

[Gameliel]

Also keep in mind that if you scan daily you get more accurate prices.. more data = more refining of the median price = more accurate. 3x daily really would be the ideal.. one in the morning, one at noon, then one in the evening.. hell, even scan early morning, say 4AM or 5AM.. ftw! Of course you'd probably have to be a fanatic to do it that way but hey.. anything for gold!

[milqueman]

I usually do a Scan just before I log off for the evening. After a hard days questing, I return to the city, browse the AH to see if there are any deals and blow my hard earned Gold. Then I do a Scan and walk away. Before I go to bed, I return to see that I've Been DC from server due to time out. So I turn off the computer. THis way I at least get on scan in a day, I find this keeps the prices pretty accurate. On most of the consumable items, like Ores, bars, Herbs and Cloth, I have well over 1000 "Seen in AH" hits.

In my expirence, don't trust Auctioneer if it hasn't seen it at least 20 times. You find this mostly on Armor and weapons. For these items, I search the AH for simaliar gear 2 levels below and 2 levels above the item I want to post, then I comapre my item to the ones in there and figure out a reasonable price.

Also keep in mind, right now becuase of TBC, prices on a lot of items are still fluctuating drasticily. This will eventually settle down, but for the time being this will skew Auctioneer as well.

[Ev_]

You find this mostly on Armor and weapons. For these items, I search the AH for simaliar gear 2 levels below and 2 levels above the item I want to post, then I comapre my item to the ones in there and figure out a reasonable price.
That's EXACTLY what I do. :)